The Bookshop Girl

Ruby Martin
Sep 6, 2018 · 5 min read

“He’s here again.

The sentence sent a shiver up her spine. As she slowly slotted the book back into the shelf, she considered her options. It wasn’t that she was scared of him or anything. In fact, he was rather innocuous, just like the rest of them. But it was in the rest of them that lay the problem. It always started like this.

She couldn’t remember when exactly it had started, she just remembered when her colleagues had started making jokes about it.

“Oh bloody hell, the fan club is here again” they would say, rolling their eyes or sending a knowing wink before scuttling away to giggle in the historical department.

They definitely didn’t all look the same. Some were tall and lanky, some short and squat, some with glasses, some not. Once there was a guy with a monocle. They did all sorts of jobs as well. Engineer, accountant, you name it, she had met them. That was the brilliant things about bookshops, they brought people from all walks of life, looking for something so wildly different. It was why she always entertained them.

She had always been a curious child, reading everything she could get her hands on. Originally she wanted to be a scientist, but she couldn’t pick what subject. (Also, she was no good at maths.) She effectively ransacked her entire local library going through all the dictionaries and encyclopedias trying to gain as much knowledge as she could. When her dad first became ill, she read all the medical dictionaries she could find, hoping to find something maybe the doctors missed. As his illness progressed, she discovered fiction.

Ah fiction, her first true love.

She would whisk herself away for evenings to magical worlds far away from it all, then recite it all in detail to her family the next day, often embellishing the bits she found boring or upsetting. It was how she had gotten the job at the bookshop actually, after a question had lead her onto a tangent where she had ended up recalling the plots of several Pratchett novels and how she would adapt them for television.

To be honest, she loved talking about books so working in the shop had worked out perfectly. She loved giving personalized recommendations and especially loved it when people came back asking for more. She was always happy to help, and with a smile on her face. It had been her dad’s way and it was now hers too.

However, she had noticed some of the repeat customers were different. They would come back within days of their last visit, and when asked about the previous book, they would be somewhat vague, often trailing off or mutter something that she was sure was incorrect. She would then have to reread the books once they were gone, in case she had missed something. After all, she didn’t remember any wars in Pride and Prejudice or dragons in Oliver Twist. At least in the versions she could find.

There were some that came in asking for good love poetry, which she didn’t mind so much. Often they were clueless boyfriends or partners wanting to sweep someone off their feet and she always felt content when the thank you cards would come in, whether from them or their partner. However they were a few that had less pure intentions.

The rest of the bookshop didn’t mind this people for a while; after all, they were spending money and buying books so all was good in their eyes. However there were a few which they had to ban. You could normally spot these ones pretty easily as they would always ask for erotica poetry recommendations before submitting some of their own. After once reading a particularly salacious verse which she had unwittingly featured, she had had to have a three hour bath afterwards. She loved fantasy as a genre, but to be a part of someone else’s is another thing entirely.

Over her time working there, she learnt not to trust “writer types”. Usually dressed in a mix of corduroy, band t shirts and turtle necks, if not looking for erotica they would often swan in during weekday afternoons asking for recommendations before completely ignoring what she said and launching into a long soliloquy of woes. Often they would ask if she would read their work, which she would always reluctantly agree to.

She actually wrote herself, children stories with elaborate illustrations which she toiled away over for hours; however she often found that the same men wanting feedback always seemed harder to pin down once they had gotten their feedback. Either that or they were too interested in getting “dinner”. One man had even offered linking her up with his agent, but had “no idea what she was talking about” when he suddenly slid his hand up her skirt. She learnt that day that just because a man has a business card, does not mean he’s there strictly on business.


“Can’t you help him?”

“He asked specifically for you. Well, when he said “you”, he said the “cute rainbow girl.”


She hadn’t really grown up particularly “attractive” so this sort of attention confused her. Once she had moved out with her very first paycheck, she started buying her own clothes for the first time. She particularly loved intricate, colourful prints, just like her mum’s book of William Morris illustrations. Like some sort of delayed teenage rebellion, she started wearing colourful makeup with coloured streaks in her hair. “The Human Rainbow” her friends called her, but she didn’t mind. After all, no one feels sad looking at a rainbow. Kids would often stare in the shop, which she didn’t mind as it often was lead by inquiries on what exact kind of fairy was she, which she would often answer in detail.

The grown men doing this however, she didn’t entertain as much but had resigned herself to getting occasionally. It didn’t stop her wearing her weirdness as a badge of honour however. She even managed to convince a few she was a part-time witch. She found mention of blood rituals was enough to scare them away.

It wasn’t to say that all the men who spoke to her in the shop were perverts or creeps per se. They were a few, often shy, men who would come in that she got on really well with. Some managed to be just friends but for some, it would take a crinkle of the nose or a small, soft laughter before she knew she was in trouble. She would overhear her colleagues sighing as she would be having a hearty conversation about the richness of Angela Carter’s vocabulary and she would feel a little ping in the chest. Oh no, she would think.

Sometimes it would be a harmless crush, sometimes a full-blown love affair. Or at least for a while, before it would turn out the same. It seemed she was always attracted to the same broken men. She hadn’t previously understood the mutual attraction until she realised it doesn’t matter what you look like to be a sounding board for someone else.

She had once told a few she trusted enough about her dad in an effort to comfort, but it often got washed away in yet another soliloquy of woe.

Just like the rest of them.

After a while, the relationship would break down, she would be hurt, than recover before they changed their mind and she would have to live in flip-flop purgatory until they decided their feelings one way or another. It never ended well whichever way.

She peeked through the gap in the shelf to examine the boy. He slowly put a hand through his caramel curls before crinkling his nose in thought.

Not again. She had a book to finish.

“Tell him I’m on break.

And my name’s Hannah.”

Ruby Martin

Written by

Writer, Comedian and Knower of Nothing

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